Superman (DC Animated Universe)
Kal-El, alias Superman is the overall deuteragonist of the DC Animated Universe, the main protagonist from the animated TV series Superman: The Animated Series, and the deuteragonist Justice League and Justice League: Unlimited. He is voiced by Tim Daly and currently by George Newbern. Biography Youth Kal-El was an infant sent to Earth by his parents (Jor-El and Lara-El) prior to the destruction of their home planet Krypton. Kal-El's capsule landed near Smallville, Kansas where he was found by Jonathan Kent and Martha Kent and subsequently took a liking to both of them. The Kents adopted the young Kryptonian, naming him "Clark" after Martha's maiden name. As a youth growing up in Smallville, Clark encountered Cosmic Boy, Saturn Girl and Chameleon Boy prior to discovering the full extent of his powers. During this incident, he aided the trio in stopping Brainiac who had traveled back in time from the 30th century to kill Clark before he could become Superman. After defeating Brainiac, the trio returned to their time, but not before Saturn Girl removed all memory of the incident from his mind. Nevertheless, the incident depicted all the strength and courage Clark would imbue as Superman. Some time later, Clark began to discover his powers, and was sometimes frustrated by his need to hide them from the public. His parents revealed to him the spaceship, as well as a hologram, that arrived with him when he first came to Earth. Clark was told of the destruction of his planet and briefly met his real mother and father. With the full weight of his past revealed, Clark could begin to accept his growing powers. Metropolis As an adult Clark is working at a newspaper in Metropolis. The city being the site of Lex Corp., a massive company advancing technology at a previously unheard of pace. Lex Corp. was lead by a man named Lex Luthor. Luthor was unscrupulous and his various experiments for profit or advancement of technology over any regard for human life would create/attract many troubles to Metropolis. Reporter Louis Lane had already been focusing on exposing Luthor, but was saddled with the newer Clark Kent to both give him some experience at the Daily Planet Newspaper, and give Louis some aid; Though according to intern Jimmy Olson, their boss, Perry White, also just wanted someone to keep Louis out of legal trouble, and Clark was one of the few people willing to go along with the high-maintenance star-reporter as she looked for trouble. Clark, having spent his youth moonlighting as an unexplained spandex-clad good Samaritan, finds he must resort to his Kryptonian alter-ego more often, both in the many more various act-of-God accidents that occur in the city as opposed to his more rural home, and the many more deliberately cause incidents created by criminals. As Louis Lane went looking to expose Lex Luthor and his company on a regular basis, Clark find following her for his work also keeps him ahead of the curve for preventing tragedy and appears as the figure the papers call "Superman" more and more. In an effort to keep people from getting scared of the mysterious Superman who routinely swoops in at any given moment and help Louis advance her career, Clark appears as Superman to do a brief interview with Louis. Louis does not recognize Superman as being Clark Kent, mostly due to his mannerisms, but he point-blank tells her, where he came from and that he is there in Metropolis only to do good. As the series advances Louis and Clark encounter more and more dangerous opponents, mostly due to Lex Luthor, either intentionally helping turn crimes into super-crimes, or just as a consequence of doing business on the sort of advanced level he was and attracted trouble to his company and by-proxy Metropolis. Through-out the series Lex nearly gets exposed many times but always manages to cover-up his direct involvement. As Superman: The Animated Series leads into the Justice League series, Lex Luthor's exposure as a mad-man directly doing harm is finally revealed. Though Lex escapes arrest his name is tarnished and he can no longer run his company, he still is able to do many crimes. At that point Superman realizes he will need allies to deal with crimes far beyond the reaches of Metropolis, thus he begins relying on the help of others with fantastic abilities to counter such world-threatening crimes and forms The Justice League. Aesthetics Superman is an slender, muscular strong man with fair skin, blue eyes and black hair. As Superman, he wears an blue suit with an yellow emblem with an red border and the letter "S" inside, he also dons red cape, boots, and briefs with an yellow belt to go with the outfit. As Clark Kent to hide his superhero identity, he wears framed glasses and occasionally wears an business suit. Personality Clark is an outright good Samaritan, he does good, purely for it's own sake. He sees the dangers of the world as temporary and thus the various problems that occur as things to be fixed when trouble comes up. Clark had trouble as a teenager coming to terms with his true identity, if he was "Kal-El" or "Clark Kent", as an adult he still wrestles with the concept, but under the blanket persona of "Superman", he could combine the two, a resident of Earth, using his alien super-powers to protect his adoptive home. Eventually he settles on being more human than Kryptonian, with his Kyrpton being more of a hobby to learn about and academically embrace himself in, and Kansas more or less being his home-planet. Powers and Abilites The first powers Clark began developing in his exposure to Earth's sun was X-ray vision. As he ran he would notice he was getting faster and faster til he was moving at super-speed. His ability to fly, was the last thing a young Clark would develop before accepting his alien biology. Later he would gain heat-vision. His most relied upon abilities are super-strength and damage-resistance. Superman's most frequent tactic to engage in with his powers is to fly into battle charging at his foes, often breaking any barriers or weapons between him and his opponents since he can just shrug off the damage himself and easily break most Earthly materials. Superman can not see through lead with his X-Ray vision and tempered steel takes time for him to break-apart, but it has a breaking point for him still. As revealed in the final episode of Justice League: Unlimited though, many of Superman's limitations of strength and speed are self-imposed as he is afraid of what attacking at his full power would do to surrounding environments. Demonstrating his full powers to the intergalactic alien overlord Darkseid, results in entire buildings being shattered just from Superman's speed, and each of his punches cause sonic-booms just from impact. 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